Chapter Two

“That’s right,” Nels Newland said. “I was working on the estate back then. Been working for the Arlingtons since I was a boy. I wasn’t here that night, though. Nothing I can tell you.”

Newland led the way down a wide brick path shaded by tall rhododendrons wreathed in pale peach-colored blossoms. He was a big man with sparse gray hair and broad, badly stooped shoulders that made him look like he was carrying Griff’s bag against a strong headwind. He had insisted on carrying the bag, and short of wrestling it away from him, Griff had no choice but to give in. Apparently it was not possible to drive to the guest cottage, which was located behind the main house. It seemed inconvenient and impractical and just the kind of idea rich people came up with for the hell of it.

“Partly I’m trying to get a sense for what it was like then,” Griff said to Newland’s wide back. “You know, just getting an overall feel of the place and the people.”

Newland grunted and continued to plow down the pathway. Arlington hadn’t been kidding about the cottage being behind the main house. Well behind the main house, in fact. But that suited Griff fine. He liked his privacy and his space. Too much so, according to Levi.

No point thinking of Levi now. That was over.

He glanced over his shoulder, but his view of the villa was blocked by the clouds of pastel flowers. The rhododendrons must be fifty feet tall. They’d probably been planted when the house foundation was first laid.

“It’s no good digging up the past,” Newland said. “Leave sleeping dogs lie, I say.”

Judging by Newland and Mrs. Truscott, it was what a lot of people said.

“Mr. Arlington wants this book,” Griff felt obliged to point out. “It was his idea that I stay here and talk to people on the estate.”

Newland gave another of those disapproving grunts that was probably the poor relation to Jarrett Arlington’s Hmm. His boots thudded down the trail in solid, stubborn cadence.

Griff persisted, “There are still questions about what happened that night. Who was Odell’s accomplice? Was there even an accomplice? Where is Brian’s body? Why did they kill him when the ransom was paid?”

“Answers to none of that’s going to change anything.”

“It will give Mr. Arlington closure.” That was something Griff had learned working the crime beat, even on a small paper in a small town like Janesville. As bad as knowing what the worst was, not knowing, not having answers, not having certainty, was worse.

The sea breeze rustled the blossoms. Bees droned high overhead. They passed a small bronze statue of a stag and, farther down the shaded path, a low marble bench. Parks in Janesville weren’t as big as the Arlingtons’ backyard. Not that the Arlingtons would refer to all this cultivated acreage as a “backyard.”

Newland lifted his head and said abruptly, “There’s the cottage.”

Griff stopped walking.

The guest cottage stood on the other side of a wide and rocky stream which pooled into a series of large green ponds ringed by ornamental grasses, boulders and classical statuary. Black-faced swans glided serenely across the pond surfaces. A wooden bridge, balustrades painted white to look like stone, offered safe passage across the water.

Griff said, “It looks like a doll house.”

A doll house or maybe a piece of wedding cake. A pretty, two-story slice of columns and cornices and arched windows. Three small stairs led to a pale pink door.

Newland had not paused. Griff recovered from his astonishment and sped up to follow him across the bridge and up the narrow stone walkway to the cottage door with its stained-glass oval of ivy and swans.

Newland set Griff’s extra bag down, unlocked the pink door, and pushed it open. He handed the old-fashioned key over to Griff. “It’s all ready for you. If you do need something, there’s a phone to the main house.”

“Thanks. I’m sure I’ve got all I’ll need.” Griff patted his laptop case.

Newland, a man of few words—unless you counted the grunts—looked unconvinced but took himself off without further ado, leaving Griff to explore the cottage on his own.

Five rooms didn’t take long to explore. Every room but the kitchen and two bathrooms—two bathrooms in a guest cottage!—had some variation on parquet floors and old-fashioned blue-and-silver wallpaper. The draperies and upholstery were slate-gray silk, vintage but still functional. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, but any one of those antiques probably cost as much as the rent on Griff’s apartment. How ridiculously wasteful. An average-size family could have lived here easily.

Okay. Maybe an average-size family of elves, because no average family of Griff’s acquaintance would know what to do with silk upholstery or a cottage in the middle of the Enchanted Forest. He smothered a yawn as he paused to inspect a painting of two Gibson girls playing croquet.

It was like looking through a window at the past. A gracious past that most people had only ever experienced through newsreels and art books. How weird would it be to live surrounded by priceless antiques and original paintings? He couldn’t even imagine not having to worry about money. Not having to worry about paying rent and saving up for, well, everything.

Wow. Not. Judging. Of course. But...the rich were really different.

And yet for all their money and power and position, the Arlingtons hadn’t been able to recover their lost child. Had no more luck in discovering what had happened to Brian than some poor family in Boscobel.

Griff yawned again and his jaw cracked. What he needed now was a shower and sleep. After that he’d go over his notes so he’d be prepped and ready for dinner that night. Mr. Arlington had invited him to dine with the family so that he could meet the cast of players. And, he gathered, so that Arlington could again warn everyone to cooperate fully.

Griff picked out one of the rear bedrooms with a view of the distant ocean and carried his luggage—if you could call a battered suitcase and a laptop “luggage”—upstairs.

He tried to hang on to his Midwestern skepticism, but there was no squelching that sense of elation as he gazed out the window at the azure haze behind the wall of trees. He was really here, here on the very shore of what F. Scott Fitzgerald had called “a fresh, green breast of the new world.” He thought of the tattered copy of The Great Gatsby in his suitcase. He was going to do it. He was doing it. He was going to write this book. The first of many books, hopefully.

“Hey!” someone called from downstairs, snapping him out of his pleasant daydream. “Where are you?”

The voice was female, young, and at this moment, unwelcome. Griff left the bedroom to cross the hall and lean over the wrought-iron banister. He had a foreshortened view of a young woman, maybe his age, very thin with brown hair cut in elaborate layers. She wore skinny jeans—that actually fit—and a long plum-colored leather jacket.

“There you are,” she said. She smiled, her teeth very white, her lipstick very red.

“Who are you?” Griff asked blankly.

“Chloe.”

“Chloe who?”

“Chloe Kloppel.” It sounded like a knock-knock joke gone bad. Chloe clarified, “I’m the daughter of the house. Well, granddaughter.”

Okay. Now he had her. Chloe was the only child of Michaela, Jarrett’s youngest daughter. She had been on the estate the night Brian disappeared, but she’d been an infant. Probably not going to have a lot to offer in the way of insight or information.

Griff said, “Nice to meet you, Chloe Kloppel.”

She shook her hair back, tilting her face up toward him in an unconsciously provocative pose. “Nice to meet you, Griffin Hadley. You look younger than your photo. Cuter too.”

Or...maybe not unconsciously provocative.

Griff asked warily, “What photo?”